A network engineer and wedding photographer in his day-to-day life, recent years have seen Zając wow the internet with his striking colorizations of the Polish capital. First going viral at the start of the decade, Zając has since proved prolific in his output - coloring both photographs and film reels, his work serves as an intriguing window to the past.
First publishing his images in February 2020, Zając was overwhelmed by the reaction of the public. “That was when I realized there was practically no competition in this field,” he says, “which encouraged me to explore this niche further and really increase my knowledge.”
While his body of work now covers the war in depth, it was the inter-war years that first appealed. “I started with that period because the earliest color pictures that survive of Warsaw were only taken in 1944,” he says. “There are so many beautiful pictures of inter-war Warsaw, but they’re all black-and-white.”
Compelled to change this, Zając utilized his tech-savvy background to find an optimal process capable of improving upon the more basic, manual methods used by many colorizers.
“I clearly wasn’t the first to color old photos, but I think I approached the whole subject in a more unique way,” he says. “Aside from using AI algorithms, my technique is based on the ‘computational’ post-production of images.”
By finding his own method, Zając says this allowed his first wave of images to stand out from others. “My approach made it possible to achieve a very high level of detail in the colors, which in turn lent extra realism to the picture.”
It wasn’t just this realism that first thrust Zając into the public eye, but also his choice of photographs. Those viewing his work did not just find the expected Old Town views, park vistas and sweeping shots of Warsaw’s elegant boulevards, but also the utterly unexpected.
In one photograph, a car hangs precariously from a viaduct while a crowd of startled onlookers gather around the scene; in another, construction workers rain sledgehammers onto one of the domes of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral as they dismantle this unwelcome reminder of Tsarist rule; in the Hala Gwardii market, we see a stoney-faced vendor standing glumly in front of an obscenely hideous catfish.
Taken in their raw form, these are striking images; given the color treatment, they become almost fantastical.
Flicking through Zając’s collection, one understands how Warsaw earned a reputation as being ‘the Paris of the East’. Importantly, however, Zając’s work is not just a rose-tinted glamorization of the past.
Presenting the many faces of the city, his work also dwells on the grittier realities. Away from the Gatsby-style ballrooms and theaters and the bright lights of the center, we see the underbelly exposed. We see gloomy factories, battered tenements, and the impoverished side of life: the forgotten people from the forgotten quarters.
Contrary to the common narrative parroted by many, poverty was rife in inter-war Warsaw - this fact is not shirked by Zając.
There is poignancy, as well. Looking at his pictures of the pre-war Jewish district of Muranów, one cannot help but be overcome by an ominous sense of foreboding. In just a few years, this chaotic but peaceful world would be shattered into pieces.
Through his use of color, Zając builds a personal connection between the photograph and the viewer – if in black-and-white the subjects of these pictures affect the look of frozen statues, in color they become distinctly human.
Now recognized as one of the most exciting colorizers working in Poland, Zając has come a long way since his early forays into the practice. Just over two years back, he hit the mainstream after collaborating with Warsaw’s Artbox Experience exhibition space to present a thrillingly vivid immersive journey through ‘Retro Warszawa’.
Composed of giant, animated images projected onto the walls, the acclaimed show is remembered for its lifelike blend of the banal and bizarre.
Zając’s work, however, has not slowed, and this year alone has seen eleven videos published to his YouTube channel. Among these, one video titled Warsaw 1927 has scored nearly one million hits.
Impressive as this might be, the best is yet to come. “I’m working on a new film to coincide with the anniversary of the Uprising,” Zając tells TVP World. “It’s going to be something very special and will include drone shots over the ruins - there’s never been anything like it before.”
